Prominent UK legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “downward spiral”, after a Conservative MP considered a future party leader suggested that significant quantities of lawfully resident households must be deported.
Divisive Remarks on Residency Rights
The MP, a shadow Home Office minister and a party enforcer, remarked that individuals with lawful residence in the UK should have their permission to remain revoked, to guarantee the UK remains mostly “culturally coherent”. The Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, later distanced herself from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later returned to existing policy that only withdraw permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. However, the proposal has sparked concern for many as a indication of “perilous periods” and part of a larger political discourse.
Growing Trend of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, leaders across various groups have adopted anti-migrant rhetoric and echoed policies that were once seen as extreme. Most recently, a political party leader complained about “every advert” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in September, the group’s head, the figurehead, pledged to eliminate the primary pathway for migrants to gain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer said the UK risked becoming an “island of strangers” without stricter border controls.
“It’s hard to believe that the implications of that phrase were not fully understood, and it was targeting a particular audience,” said Martin Forde KC, who has examined claims of discrimination within Labour.
Forde, whose parents migrated from the West Indies, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised keep Britain white campaign”. The legal expert said the current political discourse was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from generations of people who had served the country, should still experience anxiety.
“It’s a race to the bottom,” added the lawyer. “It’s alarming to see Labour feeling the sole solution to the rival party is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the benefits of immigration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be accurate.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Support for Reform has increased in the surveys, and far-right marches have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many British people of colour feeling the situation are similar to far-right marches from previous eras and concerned the UK is “regressing” as politicians focus on migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for hundreds of affected individuals at the centre of the residency controversy, in which UK citizens from the former empire living in the UK lawfully were classed wrongly as unauthorized immigrants.
The lawyer said her father, who emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the current discourse. Recently, her daughter has questioned whether they should get Caribbean passports.
“Now we’re getting kids in their 20s and 30s who have got multiple generations ahead of them, born in Britain, feeling less than,” said McKenzie.
“We are in really, really dangerous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a acceptable political direction for many groups,” she continued. “The principles here, the tentacles of it spread so far when you start talking about deporting and removing people who are lawfully resident, and millions of them as well. That’s something very different, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with ILR status, or with spouses who hold this status, have expressed that the recent policies suggested by political figures have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, alarming and unwelcoming.
One individual, a person with dual nationality residing in Manchester with his wife and children, said the recent surge of the party in the surveys had pushed him to get his British citizenship. For the past six years he has gone through the procedure of securing permanent residency – at a significant expense – after moving to the UK on a spousal visa. Should the proposed policies be enacted, he fears his family would be split up.
“It’s simple for someone to say now, well, that will never happen,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “It’s uncertain how this plays out in the coming years.”
While in daily life, he has “no issues”, he has been alarmed by the increase of national symbols in his area, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the extremist groups and immigration opponents. Long-term, though the household has no desire to leave, they may consider it if the hostility persists.
“It’s strange that in a country where migrants are needed, no one’s actually selling a beneficial narrative about migration at all,” he added. “I consider the vilification very peculiar and frightening, long-term.”
